


The Demon in the Details

by BC_Brynn



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Loyal!Judas, M/M, MVP!Crowley, Person!Jesus, Romantic Friendship, Secret love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-14 00:37:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21006788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BC_Brynn/pseuds/BC_Brynn
Summary: Judas was standing there like Lot’s wife, only as opposed to her he kept blinking. And retained the ability to speak, apparently, judging by the croak of: “Why?”Crowley rolled his eyes. “Because heaskedme to.”





	The Demon in the Details

**Author's Note:**

> Since the original Good Omens already treats Bible as free content source material, and the series went even further down that road, please take that as a benchmark. I do not treat the Bible with any amount of reverence. If this might offend you, please don’t read.
> 
> That said, this story is my chance to finally put into words one of my headcanons regarding the Bible (which, yes, I do kind of regard as any other canon, and don’t know particularly well on top of that). Besides, the pairings are in the tags, that should have been warning enough.
> 
> (Warnings are in the end note.)

“There’s an angel watching you!”

“There is always an angel watching me, Crowley,” Jesus said calmly. He looked up and smiled. “There is always a demon watching me as well.”

Crowley was still breathing hard and holding onto the gatepost. Then he remembered that he didn’t have to cater to the body quite so much, and stopped all the unnecessary drama.

“I’m not watching you,” he protested, sneering at the accusation. He heard himself, and the sneer deepened. “Well, obviously I’m watching you, I’m literally watching you right now, but I’m not on assignment.”

“Are you quite certain the angel is?” asked Jesus.

“It’s an _angel_!” As if the bunch of feckless, self-righteous arse-lickers ever did anything they weren’t commanded to do (save for possibly a single exception, but that one Crowley would have recognised at a sniff, and it was definitely somebody else he noticed spying today).

Jesus’ quirk of eyebrow called Crowley out for the hypocrisy, but he didn’t say anything. He seemed to be listening to the raised voices filtering into the garden from inside the house. The fleeting smile had long since disappeared from his face. For a moment his expression was genuine: one of utter exhaustion.

“I suppose we shall see if they come speak with me directly this time,” Jesus said after a while of contemplation. “May be they are worried I would try to run.”

Crowley could tell ineffable things were happening – things far worse than ‘just’ another argument between the Apostles – and Jesus was seeing them on the horizon. How he did it, Crowley couldn’t seem to figure out.

“I shall not run,” Jesus concluded. “Be careful, Crowley. Do not let them catch you.”

Crowley shuddered and pulled his hood lower over his face. As long as he did not actively use his powers, Jesus’ aura covered him, kept him from being detected by either angels or other demons, but he still ran the risk of being spotted and recognised for what he was.

“Make sure that only one of us dies,” Jesus whispered. Then he took a deep breath, braced himself, put on an expression of gentle disapproval, and stepped through the door into the dimness of the house.

Crowley swallowed the ‘Already? I thought we had more time-’ that was on the tip of his tongue, and did what he usually did: followed Jesus.

x

“We can’t!” Judas snapped with the exasperation of someone who was repeating a fact for the umpteenth time because it just would not penetrate the thick skulls of his audience. “It _won’t_ work.”

“It shall,” Simon Peter assured him blithely. Offering, predictably, no suggestions on the _how_.

Judas pressed his palm to his forehead. “We can’t afford it.”

“Have faith, Judas,” Jesus said with a light frown. Just a hint of displeasure and pity, but Crowley had seen it put hardened men on their knees and beg for forgiveness.

Judas took a shocked step back. He undoubtedly heard the echo of all those whispers following him, gossip from those who showed far more piety, far more concern with _heavenly_ matters than with low, crude concerns like money or _how to actually feed the endlessly growing army of people tagging along after Jesus and leaving behind all their sources of income_.

“The numbers are facts. They aren’t subject to faith,” Judas replied. His voice rose, but his tone descended somewhat, touching on the note of pleading.

_Just validate me_, Crowley could hear in there. _Just say that what I do matter, that there is a place for me, and it is a place of respect. That is why you brought me with you, isn’t it_?

Crowley had walked by Jesus’ side for the man’s entire adult life. He could predict him down to how many stones he’d skip on the river before he felt calm and centered enough to return into the fold of his ‘sheep’. He could read him now – the quiet desperation almost entirely stifled under the larger-than-life resolve. This was God’s Son, after all. Once he decided on a course of action, nothing short of his celestial parent could change his mind, and – as was often the case with children – possibly even God could not.

“You have seen me feed thousands with but five loaves,” Jesus replied. “Numbers have their place, but you must not fall under their yoke. They do not control us. We control them. _Have faith_, Judas.”

“Well, then,” Judas said softly, with a defeated tilt to his shoulders, unaware of what Crowley was reading in his mind about Caiaphas’ offer of blood money. “I shall buy five loaves of bread and five fish tomorrow early at the market, and leave it to you to feed your followers, my friend. Rest well tonight, assured that I indeed do have faith in you.” He turned on his sandal, so very slowly that it was obvious he was waiting for Jesus to call him back, to amend his decision. He didn’t even need an apology – just an acknowledgment that he mattered.

The Apostles gathered around Jesus, with apologies, and criticisms of Judas, and assurances that no one truly doubted Jesus and his leadership skills. Jesus endured the dubiously-intentioned swarming for a couple of minutes, and then gently but insistently sent them all away.

Crowley watched it all happen, standing close enough, unnoticed by any of the men. Mary Magdalene did see him, but didn’t call attention to him (clever girl, and clearly one of the few who genuinely wanted the best for Jesus, even if it came at the cost of their own personal loss).

Crowley had watched this all happening for years, of course. Since the very moment Judas joined the Apostles, the seeds of jealousy began to sprout. At first slowly, since Jesus was quite good at devoting individual time to each of his closest sandal-lickers… but as time passed, more people joined, there were suddenly women (not that Crowley begrudged anyone spending time with Mary Magdalene, she was a delight), and Jesus couldn’t quite hide that there was a less-than-pure twist to his love for _some_ of his friends…

Humans were humans. That was what made them so amazing.

And so terrible.

Temptation was Crowley’s expertise. He knew that seven out of the Apostles _would_ have been persuaded by money to share an _innocent_ gesture with Jesus to identify him to the Romans on a particular evening.

Judas was _not_ one of them.

Judas, Crowley could see quite clearly, knew the exact value of money. It poured through his hands, in much higher quantities than the thirty pieces of silver they were discussing here. Over the years he could have easily embezzled _thousand_ times that. And still, nothing. Oh, he snuck the occasional bonus lamp-ful of oil, bottle of wine or a plum piece of cake for himself, but _everyone_ did that. And half the time he gave that cake to a kid that looked at him with hungry eyes, and shared that bottle with Crowley, or Jesus, or both.

Tempted? Ha! In Judas’ whole life, there was only one thing that had truly tempted him.

And that was Jesus himself.

So, yes, Crowley could see why Jesus was so head over heels, and he could _absolutely_ see why Jesus, knowing he was about to be sold out, wanted the one to stab him in the back by kissing him to be Judas. It was selfish, and probably sadomasochistic, but there was something terribly beautiful about love like that.

“If you want him to do this for you,” Crowley said to Jesus, who was hiding his face in his palms and pointedly not staring at the doorway through which Judas had fled, “you’ll have to ask him. Directly. And explain.”

“How can I?” Jesus said hoarsely. “How can anyone ask something like that of another? Of a friend?”

He’s not your _friend_, Crowley wanted to say. But Jesus would misunderstand that, and do the exact wrong thing in response and, ugh, emotions were messy. Crowley was fascinated by _messy_, but he preferred to watch from afar and not get the hem of his tunic dirty.

“You’re asking it of him either way. Just stop being a coward about it, because you won’t be able to manipulate him into it.” Crowley had given up a long, long time ago on securing Judas for Hell. That man’s heart was almost as pure as Jesus’ (he lost brownie points for how much he wanted to fuck Jesus, but that was really just the human condition at play again). “No matter how angry or hurt or betrayed you’ll make him feel, he’ll stay loyal to you until death.”

When Jesus let his hands down, there were tears in his eyes. And in his beard.

Crowley pulled his shoulders in, feeling horribly uncomfortable. He wanted – quite terribly wanted – to find some way of saving Jesus. But… you couldn’t argue with the idiot. He did what he wanted. That was half of his charm.

The other half was that… that… _kindness_. Tolerance. Ability to see the best in people and help them find it for themselves, help them show it and be recognised for it.

He made Crowley feel utterly toothless (and not wholly damnable).

And, in the end, Jesus was a cog in The Great Plan, so Crowley would probably get Smitten for just seriously _thinking_ of messing with his untimely, brutal, humiliating death.

Jesus seemed fine with dying, too. Not just resigned to it, but a bit cheerful. Like he was too exhausted to live.

Or, as Crowley guessed, too exhausted to keep up his unbroken string of exuding utter goodness while being surrounded by masses of unwashed, self-centered, _complaining_ people who all demanded his attention, and he wanted a break without losing all that he had worked for until now. Which he couldn’t take anywhere outside of a tomb, probably. Unfair enough.

The only thing he asked for, the only selfish desire (and one that Crowley _could have_ quite easily pulled him Down for) was that Judas’s hand would be on the knife in his back.

“Coward…” Jesus repeated in a whisper. His nose was congested, so the word was barely intelligible. “You are… quite right. Thank you, Crowley.”

Crowley was this close to jumping out through the tiny window and getting lost in the Jerusalem night (always good job opportunity for a demon there). What did he do to deserve thanks? Offered advice on how Jesus should go about orchestrating his own death?

And, oh, did that make it a suicide? Jury was still out, but Crowley felt another potentially damning offence gnawing on Jesus’ soul.

He accepted a kiss on the forehead – one of the Jesus Specials, with the carding of fingers through hair, and the cupping and lifting of his chin, and the look straight into his eyes, because Jesus had always managed to blithely ignore the unnatural yellow irises and the slit pupils. If Crowley had a mortal heart, it would have burst in that moment.

He stayed still for a while after the hands were removed, as Jesus’ steps faded in pursuit of Judas.

He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to witness what would happen now. Not in Judas’ room, not in the Garden of Gethsemane (another damned garden!)… and not afterwards.

But, he told himself, if Jesus could stop being a coward, then so could he. Just for tonight. And the next few days. Then he would go back to being a run-of-the-mill demon.

After all, there would be nothing left here to stay for.

x

Judas had barely broken out the wine before Jesus let himself into his room.

Crowley was present (still unsure if he could bear to witness this), although had made himself imperceptible. Jesus could have seen him if he tried, but he was too focused on grovelling.

“The man I met,” Judas complained in the general direction of the ceiling, “the man who spoke of the return to God’s Law and Grace – the man whom I chose to follow… he wouldn’t do this.”

Crowley choked on the helpless grief. He could read so much more now, in the atmosphere chock-full of anger: Judas _despised_ money. Wealth made him intensely uncomfortable, and he found people who sought it disgusting. And he had never spoken a single word of protest, all these years, when Jesus relied on him for everything to do with money.

Because Judas was the best at it. And the one who would never abuse the position.

Crowley knew now that Judas had been reared to be a priest, one of the ‘standard’ sort – the rich and complacent ones. That he had felt imprisoned in his life until he found Jesus, and discovered that there was a chance to escape from that prison.

Poor sod couldn’t have known where that road would lead.

Jesus stared at Judas impassively. Or, rather, he tried. As if against his will, a tiny smile broke on his face, sweet as an overripe fig. “You are quite right. He would not.”

It was then that Judas got it.

Crowley watched his expression change – eyes widening, jaw falling, all of his face fell slack in shock as the last vestiges of his righteous anger were washed away.

Then, abruptly, the shock twisted into sheer pain.

“You can’t ask me to-”

“I am not asking,” Jesus cut him off.

Ah, Crowley thought, impressed. Even now, Jesus found a way to be merciful.

“No!” Judas flung the wineskin. It smashed into the wall; red spattered the wall itself and the floor underneath, trickling to Jesus’ sandals, like an _omen_. “No, the answer is _no_. I shan’t-”

“My friend.” Jesus took the last step forwards, moving deep into Judas’ space, robbing him of words and quieting his rage with simple, soft touches. A hand on the shoulder. Another on the cheek. “My brother.” A kiss on the forehead – a Jesus Special, just like Crowley’s. “My beloved.” A kiss on the mouth, chaste, but far, far too long. “You shall. You shall, because I command it.”

Crowley closed his eyes. In the fallen dusk, over the screeching of the crickets, he still heard the whispered: “Yes… my Lord.”

x

Judas kissed Jesus, as ordered.

Somehow, he managed to get out of the damn Garden alive, too.

x

Crowley had been listlessly staring at the wall of the prison cell for what felt like hours. He was angry and helpless and trying (_and failing_) to not start mourning Jesus before he was actually dead. This entire situation sucked. The Great Plan _sucked donkey balls_, and, yes, he meant that with all the implied cardinal and mortal sins included.

Why was God letting this happen? What kind of parent could just sit back and do nothing when their child was on the death row? Or was there weeping in Heaven?

Because the angel Crowley had passed in the street earlier looked pretty chuffed at how things were going.

“I could-”

“No,” Jesus cut him off before he could come up with some ridiculous false hope.

Crowley sighed. And kicked away the rat that came to sniff at his toes. “You know what I am.” Crowley should be able to figure something out.

“I have always known,” Jesus assured him in an undertone, trying not to attract the guard’s attention. “As you have always known what I am. It has been freeing – you were one of my dearest companions.”

‘Were’. Not ‘have been’. As if he was already dead.

“But-”

“It has never played a role,” Jesus cut him off. “Just as what they were has never played a role with any of those who sought to join me. It only matters to me what any of you do.” He mustered a wan smile, even though it ripped open the scab on his lower lip. A droplet of blood trickled into his beard. “Many would have considered Mary to be beyond redemption – and yet I have found in her one of the fiercest and brightest minds I have encountered, and eagerness to help matched by few.”

Crowley wondered what Jesus found in _him_. He tried to ask, but stopped himself. Twice. He was too frightened of the answer.

“I could… get around the usual strings,” he offered, staring at the bruises on the soles of Jesus’ feet.

It was what he had meant from the start. He had already bent more than a few rules for Jesus. He could just… continue doing that. It wasn’t as if Hastur could figure it out. Beelzebub… maybe. But they’d have to come up to the surface, and it would be a cold day in… Well, never mind.

But Jesus, the paragon of obstinacy, just shook his head. “This is not merely a gesture, Crowley. I am going to die.”

“I know. I can’t change that.” He wasn’t supposed to care – demons weren’t supposed to be capable of it – but apparently there was something broken in him. “But you don’t have to suffer-”

“But I do.” Jesus licked the blood off his lip and closed his eyes. “I do. That is what makes it true. If I merely died – well, you know me well enough to see how that would hardly be a sacrifice. But you, all of you who have faith in me… you deserve better from me.” This way, he meant, it would not be a suicide.

Crowley wished he could help. He didn’t see a way.

“I am not giving up,” Jesus insisted. His eyes, now open, turned to the tiny rectangle of burning daylight that was the window. “Please, believe that. What I am doing – it is not a surrender.”

“Okay,” Crowley agreed, even though the mere fact that Jesus said that aloud implied that it, in fact, was a surrender. But if the only thing Crowley could offer to this man on this day was a reassurance of his continued conviction – then Jesus should have that. “I’ll keep having faith.”

x

Hours later, after Jesus had finished his bloody weird interaction with the guard, Crowley appeared again. He had nothing better to do and – alright, fine, he didn’t want Jesus to be alone.

“I have a task for you,” Jesus told him, instinctively burrowing into Crowley’s side.

The cell was cold. He was almost naked. And he had lost some blood.

Crowley wanted to at least get him a blanket or something. He put his arm around Jesus’ back and pulled him closer. He smelled like an abattoir, but Crowley was used to far worse from battlefields, not to speak about Hell itself, so he just held on.

“Get him out,” Jesus pressed through clenched teeth. “Get Judas out of here. If they find him, they will rip him apart. Already he will be blamed for my death. You must get him out, Crowley.”

It was, Crowley decided, romantic. Jesus’ and Judas’ names, forever spoken together. Written down in history next to each other. Even if they could not make a life for the two of them, Jesus found a way to immortalise their connection.

“You showed me the world,” Jesus said wetly. “Show it to him, too.”

Crowley’s hand tightened – and then let go abruptly when Jesus gasped in pain. This wasn’t what he wanted to do. But, just like the faith before, this was what Jesus asked for.

This was what Crowley _could_ do.

So he would.

x

“You must come with me,” Crowley said, appearing out of thin air in the darkened corner of the temple, behind one of the huge pillars. It wasn’t a bad place to hide – lots of people milling around, most minding their own business, and nobody really got weirded out if someone seemed lost in prayer.

Judas jumped and brandished a knife. “What-?”

“They – are – coming – to – kill – you,” Crowley over-enunciated like he was speaking to someone slow. “You have to-”

“I deserve it,” Judas retorted, and hid the knife away.

Devil spare Crowley from dealing with idiots with martyr complexes (though no, not really, he was far too fond of _some_ idiots with martyr complexes).

“For what? Obeying orders? Move your posterior, Iscariot.”

“H-how… how do you know? How can you know?”

Crowley swallowed. It hurt.

It wasn’t as if he had never before seen a man at the end of his rope. There were plenty of men at the ends of plenty of ropes, a lot of them literal. Judas wasn’t all that special – not in loving someone and losing them, and feeling guilty for his part in his own loss. He was downright common in accepting his own upcoming murder (and looking forward to it a little bit, too). Poor bloke thought that dying was a solution to his problems.

Which, granted, some of his problems would definitely cease to exist along with his mortal shell, but Judas had not the slightest idea of what kind of problems awaited him on the other side.

Besides, all of that was immaterial, because Jesus had asked Crowley to do _one_ thing, so that one thing Crowley was doing.

“You think you’re the only one he speaks to?” Crowley bit his tongue before gave in to the urge to vent his sarcasm. He hated the phrase ‘what would Jesus do?’ with a burning passion, but found himself applying ‘how would Jesus react if he saw me do this?’, which wasn’t a tall step up at all. “And while we’re on the subject, he ordered me to get you out unharmed so, chop-chop, off we go to see something other than the walls of a shallow grave.”

He grabbed Judas’ shoulder and tapped into one of the shortcuts his kind used for traversing the distances while they waited for the telecommunications to be invented.

Everything was white.

“W-where are we?” Judas asked in a high, terrified voice.

“A lovely place not yet called London. Romans won’t get here for – oh, about ten more years or so.” Crowley grimaced, trying to reorient himself in the fog. Honestly, he should have expected it. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the chief, so the locals don’t kill you.”

It took him seven seconds to realise that Judas wasn’t following him.

He heaved a sigh and retraced his steps.

Judas was standing there like Lot’s wife, only as opposed to her he kept blinking. And retained the ability to speak, apparently, judging by the croak of: “Why?”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Because he _asked_ me to.” They had been over this already.

“Oh,” croaked Judas…

…and burst into tears. And not dignified, cinematic tears like the guilty but not really almost-lover of a great man should have, but ugly, sobbing, weeping tears. With snot-bubbles.

Crowley cringed. He looked around. Sadly, there was no one else in the fog that could have taken over in this situation, and since Crowley could practically feel Jesus’ disappointed stare on the back of his neck, he awkwardly shuffled closer. Looking in the opposite direction, he reached out and patted Judas’ shoulder.

Twice.

Judas made a valiant effort at reigning in his absolute devastation, but he was clearly getting nowhere fast, so Crowley clicked his fingers and mojo’d him. Just a little bit.

The quiet grief that remained somehow made him feel yet worse.

“Right,” he muttered. He had to find a place to deposit the man for a few hours, because there was no way on this green planet he was going to miss the last chance to spend time with Jesus. He’d come back afterwards. “I’ll show you around the more interesting places after you’ve had a bath and some sleep-”

“You think I shall ever be able to sleep again?” Judas asked wetly.

“Yeah.” Crowley nodded. “Yeah, pretty sure. If you need help, they have a wi-” He hissed. “I mean, a wise old woman, who can give you something to drink that will knock you right out.”

“How did you do this?!” Judas demanded, as Crowley’s trick of temporarily obscuring the memories of Jesus let him process what was happening around him. “What manner of creature are you-?”

Crowley yanked his hood off. “Happy now?”

Judas gaped, jaw hanging, beard still snot-smeared. Ugh, what did Jesus see in him?

“I thought you were a leper.”

“Yeah, that’s what I wanted you to think.” He didn’t have a beard, and wore his shawl wrapped so that it hid most of his face. Naturally most assumed that he was a woman, and the Apostles only spoke to women when they were hungry or made a mess of their rooms.

It was a wonder Judas even noticed Crowley enough to remember him. Must have been the sheer jealousy of Crowley having a not negligible amount of Jesus’ attention.

Mary Magdalene took the brunt of that kind of behaviour. It wasn’t her idea to be referred to as ‘the penitent sinful woman’ – if they called her simply Mary or Magdalene, someone might have forgotten that her past was not entirely squeaky clean.

Funny how no one kept calling Thomas ‘the doubtful man’.

“D-demon!” Judas exclaimed once he worked through the initial shock.

Crowley rolled his eyes again, though, honestly, he should have expected this. “Must you be so dramatic about it?”

“Have you come to take me to Hell for what I’ve done?”

“What _have_ you done?”

“I betrayed the Son of God!” Judas wailed.

Of course, this woke up a few of the locals, and Crowley could already hear them gathering to potentially defend their homestead.

“Nah,” Crowley snapped. “You followed his orders even when they went directly against your beliefs and conscience. That’s insane, but loyal.”

“I had sinful thoughts,” Judas insisted, clearly _wanting_ to be damned.

Well, tough luck.

“Oh, I know.” Pity it was two thousand years too early for the concept of thought crimes. Also, it would be some time yet before fantasies of ‘gay porn with feelings’ weren’t punishable by gory death, but Judas wasn’t stupid and never said a word. Ergo, innocent.

Even if Jesus knew. But the daft bugger knew everything, so.

“You should pull me straight to Hell. I deserve to burn.”

“Seriously?” Crowley pointed at himself. “Mate, you’ve known me for a decade. Am I the kind of bloke that pulls people to Hell?”

“Did… he know?”

Crowley hissed at the past tense. “Of course he knows. What _doesn’t_ he bloody know?” Case in point. “Now shut up and follow my lead. These people have plenty of reasons not to like strangers.”

x

Getting Judas situated with the one local merchant that spoke broken Hebrew took far longer than Crowley would have preferred. He was unused to being in a hurry. He had spent millennia waiting for _something_ interesting to happen.

He kept glancing at his wrist in a reflex to check a timepiece that would not exist for a couple more millennia yet.

He was almost late anyway.

x

Crowley froze mid-step and stared at the woman weeping into her shawl. “Whose idea was it to bring _her_ here?”

Mary Magdalene sighed. She stepped closer to him, so nobody else heard her say: “The Apostles agreed on it.”

Oh good. They had one last opportunity to do something right for Jesus, and of course they royally fucked it up. And – Crowley did a quick check around – yup, there were both angels and demons present, so Crowley couldn’t even get Jesus’ Mum away from here with the trusty old ‘fainting spell’ routine.

“It’s like _faith_ took up all the space where _compassion_ was supposed to be,” hissed Mary Magdalene.

Crowley would miss her. She was the best female friend he had ever had – there was basically no competition, but she set the bar pretty high for any women Crowley might befriend in the future.

He was happy for her that Jesus wasn’t in love with _her_. The – untrue – reformed prostitute story that went around would have become something yet a lot uglier if she was the one who gave Jesus the ‘kiss of betrayal’. Crowley shuddered just imagining the reactions. A PR nightmare.

Least of all would be a brand-new shiny fad of preemptive stoning of all prostitutes everywhere. Probably.

Sadly, in some ways people were actually a bit predictable.

“Men,” Crowley agreed cynically.

Mary Magdalene nodded in complete agreement. “And they tell us that we have to obey them. Well, show me a man both kind and wise, and I may consider obeying.”

Which, yeah. That was what Jesus did – just _was_ a kind and smart man, and funny how eager people were to obey him.

“Do you think there may be more than one in this country?” Mary Magdalene inquired. “I may not have an option now other than to marry, and the prospects are poor at best. It’s easy for the men, but we?” She looked to Crowley for advice, as if Crowley could survive a day as a mortal woman. “I feel like I don’t have a choice.”

Well, at least that part Crowley understood all too well.

“Look, here’s how it works. God tells you: you have a choice, but one of your options is Wrong, and if you choose it, I will cast you into eternal damnation.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Take it from me, mate. I know what I’m talking about.”

“You speak from experience.”

“Yeah.” They put it in different words, wrote entire _tractates_ about the freedom of choice, about God’s interminable love for humanity and the angels’ jealousy (Crowley wasn’t arguing the point, just wondered where the Great Flood and all the other local genocides fit in there).

And that was Crowley’s whole problem: he _wondered_. An angel wasn’t allowed to wonder. Crowley’s whole ‘Falling’ happened like that. He was standing off to the side, frowning, raising his hand and getting as far as ‘‘scuse me, but I thought there was some merit in Old Luce’s questio-’ before he had been unceremoniously shoved on his way Down.

Not even Jesus was capable of the kind of faith he kept asking for. But that, in the end, didn’t actually matter. Crowley didn’t _believe in_ Jesus (yes, yes, he had lied to Jesus – just try and sue him, sucker!).

He _loved_ Jesus. That was the God-forsaken trick in it.

“I always knew there was something different about you, Crowley,” Mary Magdalene said after a long pause, once again confirming that she was one of the smartest people around. Also one of the most level-headed; Crowley had expected Judas-like hysterics, should she figure out she was talking to a demon.

“It’s been nice,” Crowley said simply. And truthfully.

Then someone brought out the nails and the hammer, and Mary Magdalene ran off to the nearest boulder to empty her stomach.

“Father, please…” Jesus’ voice sounded in between the groans of pain and the gasps from the riveted audience. “…you have to forgive them… They don’t know what they’re doing!”

Jesus changed Crowley.

Well, no, that was not quite right. Jesus changed what Crowley thought he knew about himself – and in doing that flipped his weltanshauung, not quite on its head, but definitely at least onto the side.

Crowley was a demon. Demons were incapable of being loved – and yet that obviously wasn’t true. Perhaps it was just that the Son of God could perform miracles, but even so, Crowley now had a precedent.

And there were other beings capable of miracles. He had _a chance_.

That was it. Jesus convinced Crowley that he had a chance, if he just tried hard enough. That he wasn’t entirely doomed until he gave in. That perhaps, one day, he might be granted a little bit of joy… a sliver of absolution.

And look – think of the _principality_, and he shall appear.

Crowley wound his way through the gawping crowd, stood shoulder to shoulder with the perhaps not entirely unwelcome visitor, and slipped, like the serpent he was, into the role he had to play.

“Come to smirk at the poor bugger, eh?”

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: canon-typical homophobia, religious themes... and the twisting thereof, discussion of betrayal, canon character death, implied torture, suicidal ideation, depression


End file.
